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With the forecast for cooler temps and a plan in place for a comfortably paced bake, I naturally had to find some ways to mess with it...

This is how it really works in my kitchen:

LEVAIN:

A couple of days in advance, pull out 10g of 65% hydration rye starter from fridge, feed with 40g / 40g, be concerned that it takes over 10 hours to do anything, and decide to

a) refresh the main rye starter since it obviously is getting low on yeast, and

b) refresh the durum starter just in case it is getting too acidic and low on yeast, too, and

While it's not my husband's favourite, I definitely have a soft spot for a 100% whole "wheat" bread.  I use the loose definition of "wheat" to include spelt, khorasan (Kamut), durum, and the modern hard red and soft white varieties, and like to mix them up for their various flavours and what they bring to the dough.

My "wheat" starter is durum, so I built the levain entirely with fresh milled whole durum, using the really warm days leading up to my planned bake day.  I didn't plan on needing much, since this was to be a smaller loaf, mostly for myself.

With the freezer stock down to a few rolls, a couple of slices of pumpernickel, and some milk bread, I was more than happy to see that the forecast for the 28th was for 21 deg C, with clouds and showers.  We don't have air conditioning, and heating the oven to 240 deg C or higher for multiple hours leaves the main floor unbearable when the outside temps are in the 30's, as they had been for too many days.  With hopes for a day where I could bake semi-comfortably, I pulled out some of my durum and rye main starters and started building some levains.  The plan was for a large p

I have lots of packets of seeds and grains kicking around so I thought it was time to get using them. As usual the ideal recipe was found in a list of blog entries by our own DMSnyder I keep bookmarked. 

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/16957/5grain-sourdough-rye-sourdough-hamelman039s

I was in the mood for a fruit and nut loaf with wild rice so I came up with this one, and while I was at it, I thought a bit of honey and some pecans in it wouldn't hurt. The wild rice is usually cooked before putting into a loaf, but I found a method that softens it without cooking. The rice comes out nice and tender and could easily be put into a salad as it.

Here is the recipe:

This is another version of German style rolls which were inspired by a recipe adapted from Karin Hanseata's blog.  The original version uses yeast and 100% 00 flour.  I added some freshly ground durum flour to this version which gave it a nice nutty flavor.  They are a little more dense than the 100% 00 version, but were very tasty, perfect for sandwiches and burgers.

This was a super tasty bread! When dusting my countertop before shaping, I used a mix of cocoa powder and wholewheat flour. 

500g Bread flour

200g Spelt flour

100g Rye

700g Water

100g rye starter at 100% hydration

18g Salt

200g Hazelnuts

100g Chopped dates

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Inspired by recent ricman post about first try making croissants I decided to try my luck. Actually I have never made before a laminated dough as all recipes that I have checked looked very complicated and required a lot of time. 

Croissants while being baked.

While reading a post from Bread Kneading http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/52316/bread-always-cracks-one-side-and-gummy-centre about an adaptation to an Hokkaido Milk Bread recipe with Tang Zhong, I started wondering how I could do with that style of bake, and what it would taste like.  I had never done a loaf using ADY, or really tried an enriched version (other than some dried milk powder), and thought that this might be a great opportunity to give it a go.